Madness

by Sorcha MacMurrough

  He glided it in and out, and wiggled it until she squealed and cried out. He only stopped when they could hear footsteps approaching.

  She sprang off the bed ducked behind the door and tried to calm her rapid breathing and pulse. She had been so close.....

  She could feel her nipples thrusting through the fabric of the gown, her pearlescent honey saturating her thighs. She had to press them together to stop them from trembling.

  It was only the food tray for Simon. As soon as she heard the scrape of the metal and the footsteps recede, she came out from behind the makeshift curtain in relief.

  He stared at the odd light in her eyes as she came towards him, flattened him on the bed, and yanked his trousers down. She took his huge length and width in her hands worshipfully for a moment before bending her head.

  “And I adore sausage from breakfast. I’m going to devour every morsel.”

  Finally he begged hoarsely to take him in before he spent, and she slid down upon him at last. She had wanted to simply pounce and straddle him from the moment she’d come out from behind the curtain, but he was just as deserving of teasing and prolonged pleaure as she. She huffed out a little breath as he drove right up into her, and then she was yanking open her chemise.

  “My breasts, please.”

  He massaged them to even more urgent fullness and she angled herself so that the thick ridged veins of his shaft glided against her folds and peaks with the maximum friction.

  He struggled to stay with her, and drove on, watching her climax once, twice threee times. Finally she was about to collapse on top of his chest when he rasped, “N’arrête pas!”

  Through her passion-induced haze the meaning of the words filtered through.

  “N’arrête pas! Don’t stop!”

  He was gabbing at her hips to push them up and down even more urgently, and gave the command again even more raggedly. “N’arrête pas!”

  He flipped her onto her back and dragged her knees up around his shoulders. Now he felt so full inside her he almost couldn’t move. A few careful movements in and out slicked him enough to proceed and then she was almost screaming at the powerful sensation, so much so that he clamped one hand over her mouth as he watched her in awe fascination.

  “Go on, cherie, come for me again. Go on, do it again.”

  “I can’t,” she panted, feeling as if her whole body was unravelling with desire.

  “I’m going to leave you if you don’t do it for me again.” He started to withdraw slowly, but she begged him to wait.

  “There you are. I can feel your quivering as you take in all of me. Oh, lovely. Do you feel what you’re doing to me? And now this? Can you feel me? I’m going to pour into you like a rainstorm. Are you ready for me?”

  “Oh, yes,” she gasped.

  “Then come for me again. That’s right. Gorgeous.”

  Her body tautened desperately. She could feel the tension vibrate in every part of her body. She climaxed again, but the sensation only seemed to build.

  “That’s right, another one for me. Go on, another one. I’m not going to let you go until you let me have another one. Oh, that’s right, squeeze me right there. Oh, this is heaven. Come for me, love, come all over me. Surround me, devour me.”

  She did then, and felt her whole body floating upwards on a puffy white cloud. She finally wafted back down to earth clutched tighly in his arms as he too allowed himself the ultimate joy at last.

  When she could speak she said, “They might have said you were mad, but I must have something wrong with me to be like, well, like this.” She swept down the bed with one hand.

  He shook his head, smiling at her lovingly. “There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s beautiful. Don’t fear it. It’s part of your infinite power as a woman. Only an inferior or selfish man would not understand that. You flow over me like a river and I never want to leave your body.”

  “You never shall. I can feel you within me always.”

  He sighed, and his golden eyes grew shadowed with concern. “That may be true already. I mean, your friend gave you those sponges we discussed the other day, but we've been most lax and—”

  She kissed his cheek and gave her most reassuring smile. “I’m not afraid. I know things will be just fine no matter what happens. As soon as you’re well, we’ll leave here and start anew. Maybe even get married some day if that’s what you’d like.”

  He kissed her hard. “I want that more than anything in the world. But as for leaving, and—”

  “One day at a time," she advised him, not wanting to spoil the moment. "You’re still in the throes of the addiction.”

  “I think I’m rapidly developing a new one,” he said, stroking her bare belly and nuzzling her neck.

  “Not a harmful one, anyway,” she panted.

  “Only if I get too carried away.”

  She shook her head and smiled up into his earnest face. “Not even then. I know I’m very new to all this, but it feels, well, perfect. Strange too, but perfect. I think we’re well-matched. So long as you don’t keep driving me to climax like that and er, holding your own pleasure back all the time. I want to make you the happiest man in the world.”

  Simon kissed her on the brow and held her close. “You have. Pray God we will have many more days and nights like this. But I fear—”

  She silenced him with one finger on his lips. “I know. So do I. But we will find a way, I swear. Rest now.”

  “They will come,” he said quietly.

  “I know," she said with a sigh, stroking his shoulder. "I do believe you, my love. But I refuse to be afraid. I have to believe that our love, though sudden and very unexpected, can defeat them. I'm not without friends, you know, powerful friends if the need ever arises. I won't forsake you. We won't forsake you. We’ll decide what to do when the time comes. Whatever happens, we will face it together.”

  Gabrielle held that thought all day as she did her chores and spent time with Simon, helping him with his toilette and the throes of his illness.

  When Clarissa came that evening, she told her all she had learned about Simon's past thus far to relay to Oliver. Then she asked her if she had the right contacts to secure a brace of pistols.

  Clarissa’s eyes widened, but she promised she would see what she could do. “It’ll cost you,” she warned.

  “I know. Just do your best.”

  Then she returned to Simon and held his head while he was violently ill, and began to rave anew.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Thus a pattern was set, with Simon's more lucid moments alternating with periods of great illness and total torpor. But he seemed to be ever conscious of Gabrielle’s presence, even when he was asleep, clinging to her hand or arm as if he were terrified to let her go for fear she would vanish forever.

  If she sat in the corner to try to widened the hole into her sister’s cell, he would awaken and search for her frantically. When he was able to sit up he helped with the chore, and soon it was large enough for her to wriggle through if she didn’t care about her clothes too much. But it would have to be a great deal larger to fit Simon through, and he shook his head when she suggested he try.

  “They’ll notice. And if they move my cell we’re done for.”

  “It’s all right. We just have to move the cot in front of it, and we’ll dig downwards, not upwards, so it doesn’t rise any higher on the wall. And with Clarissa taking the debris out in her baskets and dumping it near the back wall, no one will suspect you had any help even if they did. Then I'll find you again and—"

  "It will be too late, my love. They’re coming for me.”

  This time the words had an edge to them she hadn't heard before. She nodded. “You’ve said that every day since I came. But Angela and the other women are keeping your guards busy as best they can, night and day, and they obviously haven’t reported to your masters yet for fear of losing their privileges.

  "After all, it's not exactly an arduous job handing you food twice a da
y and looking in your cell to make sure you're still alive. So far as your minders are concerned, you haven't tried to escape, and you’re docile. Why would either of them care if you came into money and did manage to get the cell looking nicer and they spotted a whore in here?”

  "How would you say you got in if they're the only ones with the keys?" he pointed out.

  "I can say they weren't at my post and my big burly pimp is a great picker of locks and insists on his customers all being satisfied. That should stop them asking any more questions. And Oliver can come to play the part with a few girls still in the trade if need be to support the story."

  He gritted his teeth. “I should be grateful for you being so resourceful, my love, but I hate to think how the fates have tainted your life since we last saw one another in Dorset. You were such a bright, pure little thing."

  "And I'm not now?" she demanded, pulling away from his grip.

  He sighed heavily. "I didn't mean in that way, darling, and you know it. I just mean I'm so sorry that your life has taken this turn, that our paths should cross again here, of all places, rather than some respectable drawing room in London or Lyme Regis."

  Somewhat mollified, she sat back down and sighed. "The only thing I regret is all my brother Chauncey did for the sake of lust and greed. Greed above all. I mean, I could see if he had done it all for love of a good woman like Isolde, or even because he wanted to give me and Lucinda a better life.

  "But the fact was Chauncey burned through his patrimony at the rate of knots, and when he couldn't touch what little money we had been left thanks to the watertight clauses in the will by my father's clever lawyers, well, he tried to kill my cousin Randall, and destroyed his father.

  "He also tried ruin my other cousin Isolde's father and brother to get their estate as the next male heir. And tried to ruin her reputation, the better to get her into his clutches and treat her as his whore, while he married an unsuspecting 16-year old for her fortune."

  Simon's eyes rounded further with each shocking revelation. At length he said, "How monstrous. I know he was your brother, but he sounds more deranged that I ever could have been."

  "Exactly," she said with a nod. "Which is why I never again want you to say that you're mad, do you hear me?"

  He gave her a grateful smile. "Aye, love, whatever you wish. And after all that happened, when you were orphaned and left without a male protector, you came to what, work in London to support yourselves and live with family?"

  She took up a small chisel Clarissa had managed to smuggle in, and began to stab at the plaster. "Not at first. It was mainly to help my sister once she was committed. Everyone in the Rakehell set has been very kind to me, especially my othe cousing Antony, the doctor, you remember."

  "Yes, I remember."

  "He's taught me a great deal, and I feel ashamed of myself for having led such a privileged and comfortable life when there are so many people in the world who literally have no idea where their next meal is coming from. So no, I don't feel ruined at all, Simon. Yes, I was a bright happy girl. I think I'm still a bright, happy person, but I'm a woman now."

  His eyes lit. "In every sense."

  "In all the ones that count, anyway," she said with a loving smile.

  "Indeed, kind, loving, compassionate. And dare I say it," he added, stroking down her back with one long, sweeping caress, "the most fabulously exciting woman I could ever hope to meet."

  She tilted her head to rest it on his shoulder for a moment, basking in his loving warmth before resuming their digging. "Thank you, darling, I feel the same about you. So please, don't ever think you ruined me in any sense, or have any regrets about my present life as compared with my past.

  "I may not be innocent any longer, in the sense that I do know the way the world works now, but that's all to the better so far as I'm concerned. Now I can protect myself, and those I love. Lucinda was innocent, naïve, and married a man with three previous wives, all dead before age twenty-five. I felt sure that if I didn't commit her, she would have ended up like them. Even Bedlam is preferable to a cold grave."

  Simon nodded. "Aye, indeed, especially now that I have so much to live for."

  She blushed guiltily, realising she had touched a raw nerve, and brought the conversation back to where they had started lest he dwell on the night they had met, and he had begged her to let him kill himself.

  He worked silently for a time with his own tools, until he said quietly, "They will come, Gabrielle. They need what’s in my head. I’m bait. As soon as they all get what they want, it will be over.”

  She stared at him. “If you’re so valuable, why would they just kill you? After all this time, it doesn’t make sense.”

  Simon shrugged one shoulder. “They never imagined I would be here so long. Obviously the men have taken a great deal longer to organise their plans than they expected. But the Atlantic is a large ocean, though not nearly as big as the Pacific....”

  He was off again on one of his tangents, and again he never ceased to amaze her with the remarkable facts he knew.

  He started mentioning islands which she guessed to be in the Pacific, then mentioned Corsica, Gibraltar Sardinia, Elba and St. Helena.

  “No, Simon, they’re not in the Pacific.”

  “They’re not that far away, no.”

  He began to shake and tremble, and she swung his legs up onto the cot upon which he had been sitting, and laid him down flat on the cot. She bathed his brow with camphor, and spoke to him soothingly of her childhood and pony.

  He began to complain about seeing visions, an old ruined castle, the undercliff at Dorset, him riding along it with his brothers.

  She listened as intently as she could to his recollections, sure that he was trying to give her clues as to his identity. She tried to remember as much as she could to pass along to Oliver.

  Then in the midst of the flow of words, he suddenly fell silent, and gripped her hand hard. In a brusque tone he ordered, “No matter what you do, I don’t want you to start digging into my past. It is best left buried. I’m a dead man, do you understand? From the moment the French captured me, tortured me.”

  “How did you get back to England, then?” she dared to ask.

  He shut his eyes against the pain and gritted out, “Prisoner exchange. The war was over. The two Foreign Offices wanted to show peace and goodwill, so they cleared everyone out after Waterloo and peace was declared at last. But my real battle for survival had only just begun.”

  “Surely the torture was a battle—”

  “It was,” he sighed. “I never told them. I was prepared to take the secret to my grave. Very nearly did a few times. They stopped short of killing me. But I never told them.”

  “So why are you—”

  “It’s in me. Do you understand?” He rolled up his sleeve and showed her one of his small blue tattoos.

  “Ess, a, dee," she read aloud. "Sad. You’re talking about some sort of code?”

  His teeth began to chatter terribly. “Yes. If I c-c-couldn’t g-g-give it to them, they w-w-would m-m-make me use it for them. They kept me awake, repeated the same things over and over again until I couldn’t even remember my own name. The pain...”

  She kissed him hard to quell his words and trembling, for she could see he was propelling himself unto another dreadful fit by recalling as much as he had.

  He writhed in agony under her, but she soothed him with both hands on his face, in his hair, and at length he began to kiss her back.

  He fell asleep a short time later, exhausted from the struggle. She heaved a sigh of relief that he seemed free of pain, and then set about her business with renewed vigor, widening the hole a bit more, then slipping off her skirt and all her warm underthings, and donning one of the clinic's simple homespun skirts Clarissa had brought to wear when she was cleaning.

  She wriggled like a worm into the other cell to check on her sister, and found her with her eyes open looking at her.

  Gabrielle saw the first
light of recognition in her gaze, and smiled encouragingly. She tidied her and cleaned around the small cell, talking softly to her sister, and poking her head through the hole every so often to see if Simon was awake. Fortunately, he slumbered on, and she was happy to think that true, deep, carefree sleep might be the best medicine to heal his body and mind.

  Clarissa came at six, and to Gabrielle’s surprise she had a tiny little bundle of fur with her which she drew out of her pocket.

  “Found ‘im on the way ‘ere, freezin’, poor mite. Thought it might be good for Lucy. Some folk say animals are good for people. They love you for no reason. And they give us something to love.”

  She put the matted black kitten on Lucinda’s lap, and the lovely blond woman with deep blue eyes shadowed by pain and fear sat up, startled but fascinated.